Only 7 years or so after WW2 ended the U.S. had a war going on in Korea. The US now had many military bases all over Japan and was using them heavily in the Korean ‘conflict’. The USAF was flying spy missions toward the Russian border out of Japan and the hot base was Yakota.

*Watch This Xcorps TV Special Video Release at end of this post:

Things were tense in the world because Russia would soon have the H-bomb. It was also a time before satellites looked down on the earth to predict the weather and to spy on enemies.

Getting that information was somewhat dangerous to human life! To get that job done you had to put a crew of United States Air Force fly boys together and put them in charge of a Boeing RB-29/WB-29 Superfortress and send them on weather spy missions!

Lt. J.R.Edmondson, was on assignment again 7 years after flying navigator in B-17s and B-24 Liberators in WW2. Now during the Korean conflict he was part the Fighting 56th Reconnaissance Squadron based out of Yokota Japan which was active for just one year from 1951-1952.

Lt. Edmondson used to talk to me about the very long cold missions in the weaponless planes looking for and flying into typhoons (hurricanes) to check the storms strength. One mission he said was so violent that the wind shear twisted the whole tail assembly of the B-29 off by 3 degrees! The plane had to be scrapped! A ride to all hell and back he said proving the strength of the B-29 airframe!

There were stories as well about spy missions north out of Yakota toward the Russian frontier not only to test how well the Rooskis guarded their airspace but also to sniff the air via a bug catcher atmospheric sampler which was installed where the upper and lower gun turrets had been.

This was a time when the U.S. and Russia were blowing off A bombs in the atmosphere to test them out. The question at the time was if Russia had the much more powerful H Bomb.

This question was answered on August 12, 1953 when specialized filters on the B-29 did collect radioactive fallout from Russia’s first hydrogen bomb test. News of this nuclear finding rocked the Air Staff and the world politically!

On the subject of military plane Nose Art the B-29s of The 56th Reconnaissance Squadron was bawdy beautiful and quite exceptional and though short-lived represented the very best in an all American Art form!

Lt. J.R.Edmondson was lucky enough to capture the images on 35mm Kodachrome slide film using a very high quality 35mm camera. He told me that a new squadron commanders wife had objected to the iconic artwork and the planes were soon ordered scrubbed clean. Just before that happened Edmondson walked the runway tarmac – stopping to shoot one slide frame of each B-29 with his new Nikon S2 camera – one of the first 35mm Nikon cameras!

Though there are several of the 56th B-29 nose art shots existing in black and white the 18 Kodachrome slide frames my father Mr.Edmondson shot are the only complete color photo documentation known to exist of the Squadrons Nose Art.